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“We no longer just tell small stories for small audiences. We no longer try to disguise absolutely everything about its identity in order to appeal to a broader market,” said Sobol, a Niagara Falls, Ont., native.

Fellow proud Canuck Baruchel, who plays Francie, “apprentice” of motorcycle daredevil and semi-reformed art thief, Crunch Calhoun (Russell) in the film, joined Sobol for a chat with the Star in a downtown hotel.

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“I credit the Trailer Park Boys. They opened the door. I think that was a show that was unabashedly Canadian, a massive commercial success, marketed across the world,” said Baruchel, who has had varied roles from This is the End and Tropic Thunder, to Million Dollar Baby and How to Train Your Dragon.

“Because if there were no Trailer Park Boys, I don’t think we would have gotten to do The Trotsky,” said Baruchel of Jacob Tierney’s comedy about a high school kid who is convinced he’s the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky. “I definitely know we wouldn't have gotten to do (hockey comedy) Goon, and Goon is proof positive of this concept that we're talking about.”

Sobol started work on The Art of the Steal script about eight years ago, inspired by the classic 1950s French caper movies like Riffi and Bob le Flambeur, “where you kind of get all these great character actors riffing off one another and there was a certain coolness to the whole thing.”

Sobol sets his story primarily in Windsor and Detroit (and did most of his shooting in Hamilton) giving rise to a hilarious scene where a very nervous Frenchie, wearing a lousy fake beard, has to convince a customs agent he’s not doing some cross-border smuggling.

“To be honest, it’s my favourite scene, too,” said Baruchel, who said much of the exchange with the guard, played by Canadian standup comic Mike Wilmot.

“I didn’t know that we’d be able to pull it off. But I think we kinda did and Mike and I became fast friends . . . we started riffing back and forth and we somehow distilled it into a little exchange,” said Baruchel.

“Jay often gets a lot of praise for his verbal dexterity but I also think his physical dexterity is often a huge part of it, too,” said Sobol. “He played the hell out of that scene. And interestingly enough they’re also doing that while we're actually at a border crossing surrounded by an actual border patrol which was not too happy to have us there.”

While they had the permits in place to shoot “they still weren’t super psyched that we were there,” laughed Baruchel.

Sobol said he was thrilled to have Kurt Russell involved as Crash, a former getaway driver turned two-bit motorcycle stunt performer.

“I think what people might never know about him is just how diligent, hardworking, and intelligent this guy is,” he said. “Very, very sharp.”

He was also delighted to get screen veteran Terence Stamp to play a former art thief trying to work off his prison sentence by helping Interpol.

Sobol said the actors signed on as soon as they read the script, “despite the fact that we were shooting in February in Hamilton, mostly. It was just astonishing that they were so generous with their time to come up here and freeze their asses off.”

It’s not the first time Baruchel has made a film in Hamilton and he’s an unabashed fan of The Hammer.

“I actually adore it. I’m the great Hamilton defender,” he said, adding it’s “one of the most cinematic cities in Canada. You can shoot so much there.”

Baruchel is keeping it Canadian with his next project; the script for Goon 2 should be finished any day and he says director Michael Dowse and all of the original cast, plus a few more, are on board.

“It’s kind of more of an epic. It’s the War and Peace of Goon,” he laughed.

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